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necessary!”
    “Him? Tangle with Bone Breaker!” the guard who had been talking burst into guffaws. “Hor, hor, hor!” His companion joined in.
    “So you think that’s funny!” snarled the Bluffer. “There were a few of you valley reivers at Tin Ear’s farm earlier today who got made to look pretty silly. And lucky for them, that was all that happened—” The Bluffer’s voice took on an ominous tone. “Remember it was a Shorty just like him that took the Streamside Terror!”
    Startlingly enough to Bill, this reminder seemed to take the wind out of the sails of the two guards’ merriment. Apparently, if Bill found it impossible to believe that a Shorty could outfight a Dilbian, these two did not think so. Their laughter died and they cast uneasy glances over the Bluffer’s shoulder at Bill.
    “Huh!” said the talkative one, with a feeble effort at a sneer. “The Streamside Terror. An Uplander!”
    Bill felt the saddle heave beneath him as the Bluffer took a deep breath. But before that breath could emerge in words, the talkative guard abruptly stood aside.
    “Well, who cares?” he growled. “Let’s let ’em go in, Three Fingers. Bone Breaker will take care of them, all right!”
    “High time!” snarled the Bluffer. But without staying to argue anymore, he set himself in motion through the gate, and a second later was striding forward over the lush slope of grass toward the log buildings in the distance, all these things now reddened by the setting sun.
    As they drew closer, Bill saw that there was considerable difference in the size of some of the buildings. In fact, the whole conglomeration looked rather like a skiing chalet, with a number of guest cottages scattered around behind it. The main building, a long one-story structure, stood squarely athwart their path, the big double doors of its principal entrance thrown wide open to reveal a perfectly black, unlighted interior. As the Bluffer approached the building Bill could smell the odor of roasting meat, as well as several other unidentifiable vegetable odors. Evidently it was the hour of the evening meal, which Bill’s hypnoed information told him was served about this time of day among the Dilbians. Once inside, the Bluffer stepped out of line with the open doorway, and stopped abruptly; evidently to let his eyes adjust to the inner dark.
    Bill’s eyes were also adjusting. Gradually, out of the gloom, there took shape a long narrow chamber with bare rafters overhead, and a large stone fireplace filled with crackling logs in spite of the warmth of the closing day, set in the end wall to their right. There was a small, square table with four stools set before the fireplace, just as there were other, long tables flanked by benches stretching away from it down the length of the hall. But what drew Bill’s eyes like a magnet to the table with four stools in front of the fireplace was not the tall Dilbian with coal-black fur sitting on one of the stools, talking, but his partner in conversation, sitting across from him.
    This other was not a Dilbian. Swathed in dark, shimmering cloth, his rotund body was scarcely half a head shorter than that of the Dilbian. Standing, Bill guessed that he could be scarcely less than eight feet tall, a foot or so below the average height of a male Dilbian. His face, like his body, bulged in creases of what appeared to be fat. But Bill knew that they were nothing of the kind. Seated, talking to the black-furred Dilbian was a member of that alien race which was most strongly in competition with the humans for influence with the natives on worlds like Dilbia, and for living space in general between the stars.
    The being to whom the black-furred Dilbian was speaking was a Hemnoid, and his apparent fat was the result of the powerful muscles required by a race which had evolved on a world with half again the gravity of Earth.
    Abruptly and belatedly, the meaning of Sweet Thing’s obscure reference to taking the advice of